Monday, January 29, 2007

The Moral Clarity Crew Gets Real

One of the most aggravating points that you'll hear in the run up to what looks like an attack on Iran, concerns our need to go there because we've broken Iraq. It seems like just yesterday men such as Ronald Reagan were concluding that Iraq under Saddam was bad, but at least it provided balance with Iran. Of course, back then the world was a very complicated place, and sometimes you had to think a few moves ahead. This was long ago, before our current President dumbed down our foreign policy to the sandbox level.

How many zillions of times have we heard the right wing ask, "Do you think we're better off without Saddam?" Also annoying was the childish-sounding answer the liberals gave, the "Yes, buts..." The answer to that is that the right wing doesn't get to choose when the clock started in the Middle East. I think we'd have been better off staying out of Iran way back when, and not causing a backlash that gave the Muslim fundamentalists control of a state in the Middle East. Then we wouldn't have felt we had to be an ally of Saddam, supplying him with weapons and helping him to stay in power.

It's almost like the second thoughts I have about America training Osama bin Ladin. I wish that hadn't happened either.

But now that we've had our little moral clarity crew come in and determine the thing to do was go to Iraq, suddenly you're hearing the same people make a startling announcement: The war there has given Iran too much power in the Gulf and something must be done. So we're spending as much as 2 trillion dollars to make Iran a bigger power. Plus, now that Iraq is seen for the fiasco it is, the Bush team is getting ready to have one more major fiasco in Iran. Meanwhile, this was all supposed to make things better.

These are two of the biggest oil countries on the planet, and we've trashed one and now we're looking hard at attacking another. What are we trying to do to the world's oil supply? Are we going to get a startling admission later that it turns out we really need oil and we shouldn't damage the pool? Don't we know that now?

Of course, the process has been streamlined a little. The neo-cons probably won't even bother with another terrorist attack, or making the case against Iran. They'll probably just do it and act unilaterally even within our own government. I guess the big question many are asking is what's the harm? So what if we attack another country?

The problem with making gigantic blunders that cost around 2 trillion each, is that there are only so many you can afford. If we keep this up our own country will implode. Remember the quote President Bush mangled about not getting fooled again? This is the "again" part, folks.

It's all predictable to an extent and I'm preparing my mind to deal with it. The only thing that's over the top for me, is when they say we have to go into Iran because Iraq is broken. That's making me a little crazy right now. If slamming Iraq was so great for Iran, maybe the moral clarity crew can explain why we did it then?